


Dumbguts

by DoctorQUirk



Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Am I doing it anyway?, Do I know what I'm doing?, M/M, Multi, Origin Story, Pre-Canon, no, yes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-30 12:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20446895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorQUirk/pseuds/DoctorQUirk
Summary: Long before the Hero of Tython. Long before he’d even thought of the Force as anything but a strange magic. As the Great Hyperspace War slowly clawed from battle to battle into the Treaty of Coruscant - there was a child on Dromund Kaas that no one would’ve expected to set eyes on the Emperor, much less confront him.The life of a child slave changes when he’s taken from the public sector of the Imperial state and forced into service of a Sith Lord. Offered as a gift to the heir of the Lord’s power base, he scrambles to learn the avenue of survival in Sith politics that will lead him to snatching his freedom from the grasp of those who wave it over his head. Though when his master discovers his sensitivity tot he Force none of his tangled schemes can save himself from having to make a choice between Korriban, death, and the right thing.This is very Jedi's journey, but it's way back in the timeline.





	Dumbguts

**Author's Note:**

> The first few chapters start from a younger child's POV as a sort of extended prologue, but there's a timeskip ahead to the relevant part of the plot. I'll update tags as they start to become relevant! 
> 
> Will this lead into canon? Haaaa, Nooooo.

The smell of bread and sweetness was enough to turn the boy’s insides into a gutty liquid. The bakery had a warm maternity so rarely found on Imperial homeworlds with their cities carved out of inhospitable wilds and ruins of dark temples. The Empire’s citizens were acclimated to a certain kind of acridity in their everyday, so this spot of gentle indulgence among inhospitality was precisely why the boy didn’t mind running errands for Boro Balth all the way down in the market district. Especially with the recent loss of the Hydian Way, strategic Republic embargos, and the strict sin ration on luxury goods - like flour and chocolate - most peddlers of low-brow consumer goods struggled to keep their doors open, but, inflated by wealthy greed, the bakery persisted.

“Kinnoy get that?” The boy asked as he pushed dishwater blond locks lank with grease and rain out of his face. A skinny finger jabbed into the glass at a pastry so delicate it appeared to be floating. He winced at resulting squeak. Glass, like most translucent objects, melted into the air and constantly left him guessing. “And that.” He pointed more carefully at a dark thick chunk of bread covered in syrup glaze, then stuck out his middle and pointer fingers.

Brown water had collected in puddles around his bare feet, while his stomach groaned in protest at the ache in its core. The line behind the boy gave him a lengthy berth, but if it offended him, his hungry blue eyes swiveling back and forth anxiously over the case didn’t betray it.

“Sure, Luv.” There was a smile in the woman’s voice, so the boy flashed a grin full of yellow stained teeth back as he ignored the disapproving beige shapes of her coworker beside her.

Then, as she packaged up his purchases, he fished a cheap datapad from the bag and squinted at the marks printed under the floaty pastry. He had to move close enough to fog up the glass before the fuzzy muddles consolidated into sharp little lines.

_“Why do people insist on sending their filthiest slaves to the nicest places in_—"

He swallowed and shook hair from his face. His eyes hurt, but he couldn’t hear the man behind him anymore. His voice was a puddle of radio chatter trying to find signal in a lightning storm. With the smudge he’d left on the glass in the corner of his eye, his fingers pushed the buttons on the pad with a sightless intuition. He stowed the pad. When his hand reemerged, it was with a fistful of credit chips threatening to slip from his grasp.

He carded his thumb twice over the raised markings of each chip, then reached up onto the tips of his toes to dump them into her hand. This exchange where their skin brushed was one of his favorite parts of the errand. The boy didn’t care much for her, but she did make him feel a funny way with her laserbrained cheerful voice, simpering smile, and pale white hands. Only his were paler when he saw them touching hers, but he was the palest being in Kaas City; it didn’t count. She never tensed or drew away when he touched her, so he was able to feel the texture and temperature of her skin. It was soft and cool with the lightest wafts of lemon barely discernable above the thick yeasty smell of the bakery. It was a simple thing, but it inspired a sense of nostalgia for memories that had never been his own.

“Bun’s wrapped up tight for you how Balth likes it. I put in a little something extra for you too, Love.”

“Oh, Ma’am—thank you Ma’am. You really didn’t have to, Ma’am. Here—” the boy reached back up on his tip toes. Swaying and stumbling, he went through great pains to hoist the little brown paper bag over his head.

The red-haired lady laughed and fluttered her hands at him. No doubt she thought she was doing someone deserving a kindness. “No, no, Darling. It’s on the house for your hard work. Go on now. Your master will be expecting you.”

“Ta, Ma’am.” He gave her a giddy grin, then scurried out of the shop with his prizes.

“You shouldn’t be so nice to him, Miri. He could steal something,” the red-haired woman’s co-worker said in an undertone that wasn’t as quiet as she thought.

“He’s just an underfed boy.”

The boy privately agreed with Miri’s coworker, but his victory would have to be indulged in silence. He had worked hard on Miri until she felt more pity than disgust for the poor slave boy with blond hair and washed-out blue eyes. Stuttered words and an oversaturation of politeness over time created the illusion of an unshakable anxiety that many other slaves his own age had long learned to swallow. It helped that he’d always been a little on the runty side. He judged himself to be the age where he’d stop physically being a child any day (he’d noticed a disconcerting slimming of the baby fat in his belly), so he’d wring milk out of his fading youth while he still could.

But the door had slid shut behind him, which trapped the conversation and smells in another world sealed behind him. The heavy monsoon had petered into a thick mist that diffused the harsh holographic lights of Kaas City’s market district into gauzy technicolor. The boy skirted around the awning covered entrance and Imperials that skirted around him in turn to the edge of the building. It was tucked away from foot traffic, so the boy could watch the crowd’s shadowy mass ebb and flow without interruption if he so wanted. He didn’t today. The lip of the bakery’s overhang provided slim but effective shelter for a tiny back pressed into the rigid metal wall. It was slippery with condensation dewed up from the rising heat of the planet’s humid core, but wet clothes and chilled skin were an easy price to pay for a full stomach.

Moving gingerly in the limited space to avoid mist dampened hands, the boy pressed his fingertips against the paper to feel the contents inside. The brown packaging barely dimpled under his probing, yet easily yielded its contents to him. Balth’s muhja pastry was so light, it was difficult to discern, and careless touches could send the delicate puff into a collapse. The buns, however, were a dense round wall packaged securely up against the side of the bag, so it wouldn’t wreak havoc on its neighbors. Miri’s mystery treat - something different every week - was lengthy and had weight. It wasn’t as heavy as the bun, but it certainly wasn’t as light as Balth’s pastry, but it felt as though it could be knocked over with a push.

This was the tricky part. The boy slid his fingers along the edge of the bag’s mouth to feel out the seal. Once he’d sussed out the edges, he slid his long thumbnail underneath to gain leverage then pinched the sticker between the nail and his pointer. Millimeter by millimeter - holding his breath in his lungs - he pried it up, heeding the integrity of the paper so it wouldn’t tear. Eventually it popped free, and he sighed out an aching breath.

The boy stuck his hand down the bag, careful not to cause damage, but the caution that had clutched him through his errand was waning. The smell in full force, like an open vent blowing on his face almost paralyzed him at the same time it nearly toppled him into a frenzy. Warmth, bread, and the lacey scent of freshly whipped cream and sugar rose and teased his loudly complaining stomach. Hands beginning to quiver, he forced them steady as he pulled the bun and bread stick free. He didn’t stop to inspect or savor. He pushed the unwrapped bread straight into his mouth. His tongue barely had time to move out of the way before he sank his molars in. He gnawed the stick down, never once removing it, never ceasing the compulsive chewing - until only the bitten end crust remained clutched in his hand against the wrapped bun.

In one fluid motion, he popped it in his mouth with barely enough time to choke down his last swallow, then tore the top bun’s wrapper open. Too round and sticky to fit in his mouth all at once, the boy was forced to tear chunks with his teeth that threatened to split his cheeks. The swallows made his eyes water with pain, but he didn’t know the sensation, or the gawky stares, or any sense of shame. He was beyond any emotion besides the primal clutch of grievous hunger seeking resolution.

Panting and trembling slightly in the white blue hologlow, the boy stripped sugar off the empty wrapper with his teeth. They left tiny trails in the syrupy residue, but unable to strip it properly or efficiently, the boy resorted to chewing the pulpy crepe paper. His teeth and tongue extracted every bit of sweetness until it was gone and then he swallowed the clump of mush. These motions became slower, less methodical. He could feel the sugar warming his blood and the sudden painful fullness of his stomach seduce then overwhelm his senses with a pleasant tremor and sinking eyelids. He brought his shaking hand to his face to rub the evidence away and then and sucked each finger clean and swiped his tongue under every fingernail until only the plain salt of skin remained.

He wiped his hands dry on his clothes so spit spots wouldn’t seep into the brown paper, then refolded the lip along the lines the woman had left until Balth’s passion pastry felt snug in the considerably lightened bag. He tucked it under the cheap synthetic material of his tunic, nestled it in the crook of his arm folded over his full stomach, then whisked away.

The boy had become an expert at darting around throngs without getting into collisions or slipping on the perpetually rain slicked metal of the streets. The mostly empty chip purse flapped against his side as a reminder of what had been strictly designated as cab credits spent on a sticky bun. If he took longer to reach the Mandalorian Enclave than a taxi, then Balth would know he’d pocketed his fare money again. Balth felt secure in the fact that reaching the Citadel and its trio of Enclaves from Kaas City proper required a taxi and that giving the boy just enough money for his pastry, something for himself, and cab fare plus a few spare creds was enough of a collar. That it was an impossible feat for anyone to skip over the abyss where the city fell away into lower grounds for miles, was a natural assumption to make. But the boy knew better.

He skidded to a halt in a deserted spot in the market populated by only a few outdated maintenance droids. His feet – numbed to the bone by chilled rainwater - kicked up a spray as they scrambled for friction on slick ground. It was easy to see why no one frequented this area. Bursts of vapor obscured the air in billowy white - but ultimately harmless - clouds. They issued in choking puffs from a network of pipes laid into the outside guard wall. The boy, sides stitched up in knots, placed the paper bag between his teeth and clambered up the slippery metal. He heaved his weight up with arms that barely supported him until his chest laid on the edge, his head dangling into the dark maw. The open air dropping from the lip blurred into clouds the further it fell until he could make out little but the shadowy shapes of the unknown below them. Had he not done it so many times before, he would’ve lost the contents of his stomach. With the most miniscule of movements, he twisted flat onto his stomach so that the flat grey sheen of wall burst from underneath his chin, like a guide line, and sucked in deep gulps of air.

From here, if he twisted his head to the side, he could see the pipes twisting down, down, down in the grey filtered light to the lower levels parsecs below. One pipe stood out from the winding column. It was a behemoth of rough iron as dark as the depths of Droumnd Kaas’ black heart that ran not down but straight on into the fog. Wide enough to fit four of the boy and one of Balth, if the Mandalorian made the most of it, harsh metal lettering emblazoned with the Imperial seal was stamped into the side. The boy wasn’t able to read this writing, but with the grip railings running along the top and a meshed hatch that could be lifted open with no effort for even a little boy, he suspected it was a now largely unused access pipe from days before speeder access had become public.

He sucked in a deep breath that filled his lungs until they burned with pressure, then gripping the wall’s edge with his knees and elbows, the boy slid forward inch by inch and counted every movement. Breathe. The edge of the wall pressed into his little sternum and ribs until they threatened to break, but only if the metal squeezing space from his belly didn’t force him to vomit over the side first. _Breathe_. It wasn’t a precise science, but it hadn’t yet failed him. Exhale. At the end of ten scoots, he stopped and gauged the murky depths.

His vision swam with ripples of already hazy vision and the gusty white fog that had seemed so harmless before but was choking now. At times the pipe below seemed like a solid reality, at others a mirage that he’d plummet right through on his way through the stratosphere. Thunder rumbled in the sky above. It was a long way off, but it urged the boy forward through a routine he’d done a hundred times before – not with an encouragement of “be brave” but with “hesitation brings the promise of worse things to come.”

The boy closed his eyes.

And felt a warm breeze press a cool hand against his clammy skin. Sometimes he felt like the world spoke to him when he wasn’t paying attention; It filtered through his skin, like errant thoughts through the sieve of the mind. The nothingness whispered nonsensical tales to him that ended only in death, the people below obsessed over details in their lives that he didn’t quite understand, and the wind’s words weren’t real.

The boy breathed all of this in, swallowed his queasiness deep into his hips, then swung his other leg over. He felt when the muscles in his arms still clutching the wall gave, small and unable to support his weight dangling from a precipice. The drop was only a third of a meter, short enough for his feet to accept the impact without giving, but long enough for his stomach to rise into his throat. The pipe echoed a mournful reverberation down its length when he fell onto it, but the metal was built sturdy to last and didn’t betray him.

Inside was cool, and dark, and ancient. Apart from the boy’s little excursions, the tube remained unopened, sealing stale air and memories inside. He imagined that he was moving through them as he crawled along ghosts of paths traversed long before he found them. This was the closest thing he had to an imagination, being a rather practical little boy with a bag of pastries clamped gingerly between his front teeth.

His hands, previously clean from the thorough licking he’d given them, slimed with the unhappy juices of mosses and fungi that carpeted the bottom and walls, like an ornate carpet. The boy was too often nearly swayed by a desire to pocket a small light and bring it into the tunnel. Not for navigation (he could find his way easier in the dark than in the light) but to admire the tapestry of life coated along his hands. The still air and black iron, however, made him feel as though such a stern place, overgrown at it was, wouldn’t appreciate disturbances.

It wasn’t a _practical_ feeling much like thinking the world could speak wasn’t, but he considered it a sacred one. Balth was always going on about how a man should have convictions, passions, and sacred truths inalienable to the heart in spite of others. The boy was of course not a Mandalorian – like Balth - or a Force user, or an Imperial; he had only himself, so if he could find something beyond himself that he considered sacred, abandoned maintenance tunnel and the thunder though they may be, he felt it was imperative to cling to it. 

The tunnel was long as it was dark as pitch. For the latter he was grateful, for the former, he was more grateful that the Citadel was an early stop for it was likely that the pipe continued into the depths of Dromund Kaas far past the city. By the time he came to a four-pronged fork, he should’ve been halfway to the Enclave by cab; he was making good time. The first two passages carried a clean warm draft of air. They led to the Mandalorian Enclave and Sith Sanctum respectively. The third continued for a long time without any landmark, and he’d been forced to turn back. The fourth, he’d never ventured down.

Light began to press on the boy’s eyes that grew steadily into a green glow. Soon he reached a meshed grill tangled up in a dense growth of flowers and fern. They had weakened the rusted bolts that the boy had long since persuaded out of their sockets. He pushed the grate aside. Light, dim and cloudy but still light, streamed in. After the shroud of darkness, it forced his eyelids shut. Through the protective shutter, he could still see bursting stars winking painfully against his eyelids, but he slid out of the tunnel all the same, then sealed it back up.

By the time he stumbled out into the large rotunda spilling from the entrance, he was just within his short believable window of time, but he had to work quickly. Sheltered behind a large holovison built in front of the long-forgotten entrance, the boy swiped his palms clean on his pants and resettled the bag before taking a deep breath and ducked out of cover and into a colorful fold of loud bodies.

Sweat mixed with metal assaulted him until it hit the back of his throat. He was small enough not to be noticed by most crowds and knew by this time the key to blending in, which was to mind ones own business. He wove his petite figure through the warriors, strains of Mando’a melted with many gruff dialects of basic highlighted too with exotic tones of alien languages that the boy had no name for and only half understood. Even as he scuttled through them, the occasional “Pardon,” “S’cuse me,” leaving his lips, his shoulders relaxed.

The Mandalorian Enclave was a large building – not the largest in Kaas City, but it loomed far above the crowds – domed by scarlet awnings stories tall. Tapestries in deep green and red stamped the proud symbol of Mandalore to watch all who entered. The boy might’ve said it had been the most striking building in all of Kaas had it not been but a small feature of the citadel. The citadel that housed Sith Lords, Darths, and the Emperor himself rose so far into the densest of clouds that trying to scry the top from the ground made one feel a world below and pushed voices of dread into the mind.

He had little time to marvel at long worn first impressions as he entered the Enclave at a pace caught between a stumbling walk and a jog. There was a note of desperation in the way he doubled up on his steps to cover the long distances that his short legs just wouldn’t go.

While he had made it back on time, it wouldn’t do if he didn’t have Balth’s change. If he didn’t turn the extra creds in, then Balth would assume he’d pocketed or spent them. In the boy’s opinion, there might’ve been two reasons why Balth did this; either Balth thought that the boy was incredibly simple and wouldn’t notice Balth’s honesty test or it was a domination tactic to force the boy to continually deny himself. 

As the boy scurried into the gaping Enclave entrance, his stomach tied into slippery knots that rubbed in disconcerting ways. The closer he got to his goal, the more the anxiety mounted. Subconsciously, the boy quickened his pace. When he found the two innermost guards posted on either side of the corridor that lead into the main building, he let go of a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

One of the Mandalorians shifted to glance at the boy. His armor clicked coolly against the metal floors. The hallway behind him breathed manmade chill that condensated the heat on his skin at the threshold.

“Watcher,” he nodded to the warrior.

“Aren’t you a little busy to be making small talk?” the visor said.

The other helmeted person interceded. “Balth’s waiting fer you on the second floor. You know the room.”

“Ta, Syra.”

The white of her helmet shifted against the same glaring color of her breastplate in a way that seemed to indicated she was nodding. The way the armor clicked together, the pressurized rubber sounding flex of the seal of the helmet against her neck – told the boy more than the kaleidoscope of shapes in his vision.

Filing the scrap of information away, he pattered down the hallway and ducked into the slave’s quarters. At this time of day they were mercifully empty. There were bunks up to his middle finger. All of them except for the one across from his were occupied.

There was little to distinguish individuality at a first touch, but if his bed was moved from the left alcove, he could tell it from the soft pile of outgrown linens and spare rags that lined the nest he’d lined underneath the covers.

He rubbed a particularly old and soft fabric sticking form the bed’s edge, then carefully felt for the cold metal of the ladder. He closed his eyes. This was easier than mounting the wall, though he had to be careful not to crunch the bag on the edge. Over the years of this routine, the boy had gotten quite good at cradling things delicately in the crook of his arm that kept itself stiffly in place with an almost moral duty. The higher he climbed the more red pressed itself through his eyelids with an Imperial insistence. The boy knew the stolid red of their lights by now and hated them, but the ache that wormed itself behind the sockets let him know that he was close enough. Free arm outstretched, he felt until his happened upon it. The yarn of a plain quilt. The boy pulled himself onto the bed and knelt before the pillow. The bag was extracted, and again slivered open by a fingernail. The bun, still warm – though fadingly so – in his small hand was slipped carefully beneath the pillow.

When his cold feet were placed back onto the floor, the boy climbed onto his own bed, then crawled to the corner. The box spring mattress tempted him to snatch a few minutes rest that would undoubtedly turn into a collapsed pile of little, tired, satisfied boy; he knew better than to indulge such temptations by now. Instead, he felt around the corner pressed into the wall for a slit in the worn seams. If one didn’t know what they were looking for, it could be easily passed over, but having made it, the boy slipped his fingers in with ease. Inside was a hard lump wrapped in more cloth, so that it couldn’t be felt from the outside. There were a few things in this bundle, but the boy only needed one. He carefully extracted the same number of credit chips of change Balth had given him. Today he had one each for his thumb, forefinger, and middle finger.

While they looked like real credits, closer inspection would yield discrepancies in the stained black lines. They would of course, read when inserted for payment, but if put under more stress than rubbing against the inside of a purse, they would begin to fade into sooty smears in the hand. Each varied in size by a few millimeters, and the plastic was softer than that of the standard credit.

With these fisted between his still kind of slimy sweaty fingers and the bag, he scrambled to Balth’s war room on the second level. He barely caught the elevator, which was already shin height off the ground. Despite the best misgivings of his logical side, the boy jumped for it and hit something that shouldn’t have been there. The misgivings turned into a startle that raised every hair on his body in the swampy heat that permeated every inch of the tropical planet as he ducked and rolled. His face cracked against the floor. The impact hurt deep into the roots of his gums and the world unraveled into straight lines, but the paper bag remained upright and curled protectively against his side. It felt prophetic. The boy looked up, blearily, to see what he’d hit had been someone’s leg. A deep instinct unfounded in the fall yet as old as the human race, told him to lie in bodiless words still and unmoving. Sterile air was rarely prophetic in his experience.

“Fryer!”

His pointy chin tipped upward at the a worn, rough, and altogether familiar voice. As though he’d been branded, the boy tried to scramble onto his feet. Before he could find his footing, a large hand reached from the opposing direction of the thing he’d hit and pulled him up by the scruff of his shirt. It began to beat the dirt off of him with clammy alien fingers.

“Sorry, my Lord, this one’s a bit of an idiot. My people call ‘im ‘Fryer’ in our language. Roughly ‘Dumbguts’ in basic. ‘Di’kulta’ in Mando’a when he’s havin’ himself a bright day.” Churl responded. The little boy could _feel_ her gaze boring deep into his although he had no way of making out the features in her bright alien flesh colored face, but as his stomach sank into his hips, he had no time to worry about that.

‘_Lord,_’he’d said.

“Mandalore, what’s this you got on yourself, euk dar’manda?” Churl muttered. A large hand that glimmered red in the growing light of the shaft tugged at the thick, pungent, green stains on the boy’s clothes.

The boy, Fryer, grimaced at the dulling ache in his side, the second Mandalorian tugging at his clothes - Balth - and the sting of a floor cracked jaw, then nodded. Slowly. The world lurched distractingly, and the boy did with it. His throat clenched tight at the last second as he heaved.

The tanned hand caught the boy around his middle. From thumb to little finger, his entire palm was as wide as the boy. The child had little time to notice scale in a city perpetually bigger than he would ever grow, but Balth’s battle roughened hand was _perpetually_ sobering. He closed his eyes and steadied himself against the hand. Beads of sweat lined his pale brow quickly turning pallid.

“Don’t you have something to say, Fryer?” Churl prodded.

Fryer turned gingerly to face the person he’d bumped into; although still partially incoherent, the word ‘Lord’ carried the weight of the Empire on its shoulders. He – he must’ve been a ‘he’ because Fryer had rarely seen a woman built so thickly – was dressed in clean cut military style body armor underneath richly dyed but practically cut robes. If there was an insignia emblazoned across the chest, Fryer couldn’t make it out. He didn’t need to. The word ‘Lord’ and his wine dark skin left little to the imagination.

Fryer fell to one knee, concealing a flinch at the smart coming from his side, and bent his head. “My Lord, it’s the greatest honor to have met you—er Sir. See, you’re the first Sith I’ve ever met. I’m sorry to have made such a poor impression. Churl’s right. I’ve got very little going on up there.” Fryer looked up and tapped the side of his head. “Do first, think later that’s me. Please forgive me; it’s not rightly my fault, you see.”

He wasn’t able to read facial expressions with his eyesight, but an uncomfortably strong sensation of scrutiny swept through his skin down to his bones. Like it had on the ground, the ancient feeling pinned Fryer to the floor, like an insect in a glass case. He sucked in long languid breaths that concealed the heaviness in his lungs.

“That’s quite alright,” the Sith replied after an age. His voice was both so cold and yet obsolete that it felt like frostbite. “It’s not a crime to run into people. I’d even say you were being dutiful like you were trained to be. Work ethic and loyalty are excellent traits in lieu of others.”

Fryer blinked. The praise lengthened itself up his spine, so he held himself straighter, but something in that sentence sounded poisonous. The way the chilly voice delivered it, didn’t sound particularly like a compliment. Perhaps it was because Fryer didn’t understand all of the words or had never met anyone with magic in their hands, but he couldn’t parse it.

Balth’s callouses tugging on the skin of his shirt broke the illusion as it settled onto Fryer’s shoulder.  
“What’s that you’ve got there?”

Fryer plastered on a sheepish stained smile and offered the bag with stiff fingers that Balth had to practically unclamp from the bag.

“You alright, euk dar’manda?” he asked as Fryer hastily pressed the slimy creds into Balth’s hand.

Fryer widened his washed-out blues a little into feigned surprise.  
“_Meeee_?” he asked.

Balth sighed, and the pressure thrumming into a headache alleviated. For a second Fryer could feel the bare wind of the elevator rushing upward in its metal shaft. Then they stopped abruptly. It would’ve pitched Fryer had the Mandalorian’s hand not been fixed with concern to his shoulder.

“I’d like to see you when you have a moment, Fryer. I’d like to ask you something.”

Amidst the Sith’s chill an ethereal tinkle passed through Fryer’s ears. Something that sounded suspiciously and impossibly like the small chime down in the market and very much like a laugh.

Fryer tilted his head toward Churl, as though asking if she’d made the noise. “Run along,” was all she snorted, though as Fryer passed out of earshot with Balth, he could hear her long after she should’ve been down to corridor say “I swear the little bugger can see sometoimes,” to the Lord as though they’d been just at Fryer’s shoulder


End file.
